


Blood and Water

by freakazoid



Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, Akatsuki!Naruto, Gen, as opposed to shoehorned romance, canon is dead, except naruto isn't evil, naruto is really good at making friends, sai is technically included but not very interesting, sasusaku but not the shitty canon kind, shit this is gonna be long, that is they actually have a relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:19:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8610295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freakazoid/pseuds/freakazoid
Summary: Deidara finds a little brother, and Naruto finds a family . . . of sorts.Akatsuki!Naruto.





	1. I

            The last thing the matron of Konoha’s orphanage wanted was to wake up in the middle of the night to crashing and yelling. Even if the building’s walls weren’t absurdly thin, the noise would’ve carried throughout the place. She blinked her eyes open, wincing at the dryness, and wincing again at the noise which met her ears.

            Kaga Tomi flicked on her light with whispered curses. She donned her robe reluctantly—threadbare as it was, it wouldn’t do much for the cold, or her modesty. Everything in this place was damnably thin, from the walls to the clothing to the children themselves. The shiver from the draft as Tomi exited her room reminded her to get at least money enough for decent _something_ , though where that money would come from was a mystery that never seemed to be solved.

            Shaking her head to clear it, she hurried along the wooden corridor. The loudest noises had stopped, but her keen ears picked up the padding of footsteps approaching, the sound of someone attempting to be quiet. Tomi sighed, massaging her temples and wishing she was in bed as she shivered. It certainly didn’t take a genius to guess who had been responsible for whatever commotion had occurred.

            The footsteps came around the corner and Tomi ducked into the shadows. Just as she had guessed, a child with wild blonde hair and blue eyes rounded the bend. In his hands, close to his chest, was clutched a bowl of rice, obviously stolen from the kitchen. Uzumaki Naruto was unusual in that he possessed a last name in a building full of orphans, but that wasn’t the strangest thing about him: the demon sealed in his body truly set him apart. He certainly lived up to his demonic reputation; this wasn’t by a long shot the first instance of food pilfering.

            As the boy moved down the half, as fast as he could go while still retaining a semblance of stealth. She ducked into the shadows, and as he passed—

            “Ow!”

            With the skill of a woman with years of child-wrangling under her belt, Tomi snagged the boy’s ear. He twisted futilely.

            “Naruto!” she snapped, venting a little of her irritation at being woken up at such a ridiculous time. “Stealing food again, are we?”

            He looked up at her with a wide-eyed, innocent look she might have believed if she didn’t have her knowledge of the boy. “I was really hungry, ya know,” he protested.

            She twisted his ear, out of habit, and he yelped. “Don’t say that. You sound ridiculous. And hunger is no excuse to steal food from everyone else, something I have explained to you many times before. Give that rice to me, now!”

            The boy did, reluctantly. As she took it in her hand he kept his eyes on it, longing on his face. He wrapped his hands around his stomach, hunching over.

            “No dinner for you tomorrow,” Tomi added.

            He looked up at her, eyes wide. “But— “

            “Don’t you _but_ me, young man!” she snapped, temper wearing thin. She pointed off to his room. “Now get to bed unless you want me to make it a week!”

            Tomi marched after him to his room, hand on his shoulder, and bolted it after he slunk off into the darkness. She rubbed her eyes, fatigue finally catching up to her, and moved to her own room, trying to strike an awkward balance between moving quickly enough to get to her room as soon as possible yet not too quick lest she make herself shiver.

            “Demon indeed,” she muttered to herself, wondering how much of a mess the child had made in the kitchen. He’d probably spilled most of the rice while making it, just to spite her—it certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

* * *

 

            The papers in Tomi’s office were piled high in teetering stacks. To anyone observing it would appear to be the haphazard mess of a lazy, disorganized pencil-pusher, but Tomi was the opposite of lazy and disorganized. The precarious stacks on the desk were in fact her own, rather unusual, filing system. It was all meticulously organized, if one knew how to look.

            Today, she licked her index finger before expertly extracting several sheets of paper from the middle of the stack. Tomi put it down for a second before rubbing her eyes in exhaustion. Sleep was a commodity she needed almost as much as decent clothing.

_Damn demon child._

            The file in front of her once she opened her eyes was something she hadn’t reviewed in a long time. The scrawled writing wasn’t hers—Tomi crinkled her nose at the lack of form—but she was at least able to make out what it said. The file on Uzumaki Naruto was sparse, even by an orphanage’s standards. There was a picture of a moderately pretty young woman, but no names for the parents—though he was apparently a legal citizen of Konohagakure. Even for children orphaned in the war, someone might know their parents, but this child was a nameless nobody. Just as well, Tomi supposed. No need to ruin the life of a perfectly normal child by infecting it with a demon.

            A cracked nail flipped the sheet of paper over. There wasn’t much more to a child’s file. The next page listed known relatives—several, similar in appearance to the woman on the first page, had been crossed out. As her eyes skimmed the page without much hope, she noticed one picture which hadn’t been crossed off. It was taped on to the paper haphazardly, probably added after the file was originally compiled. The small, grainy photo showed a boy a little older than twelve shying away from the camera, gloved hands held in front of him as if to ward off the flash. Even in such a poorly taken picture, the resemblance to her own charge was obvious. Their hair was the same color—though that of the mystery boy was longer and less spiky—and the eyes held the same expression.

            Tomi glanced to the caption. The picture had been taken five years ago in Iwa— _half-brother, mother’s side—13 y/o_ a precise hand informed her. It didn’t take a mathematical genius to add the numbers up, to jump to the precise conclusion that Tomi did:

            _Eighteen_ years old.

            Tomi fumbled for a fresh piece of writing paper, procuring a pen from her pocket. No matter how elusive this man might be, she was determined to at least locate him. It wasn’t like anyone was going to miss Uzumaki Naruto anyways. Better he was somebody else’s problem.

* * *

 

            “You have a letter.”

            Not even a second later, a heavy piece of paper smacked Deidara square in the face, bouncing off his nose and rebounding onto the book he was trying to read.  He glared upwards at the culprit.

            “Oi, no need for that, yeah!” Deidara protested loudly, but Kakuzu was already gone.  The blonde made a face, but looked down at the page of his book, which was now partially obscured by a scroll. His lips quirked into a confused expression. Kakuzu handled incoming messages because he was the only one who actually received letters (most having to do with the Akatsuki’s finance). Nobody else received mail, primarily because S-class missing-nin didn’t usually have anyone to receive letters _from_. Deidara was no exception—he doubted anyone from back home would want to write him, the Akatsuki were the only people he associated with anyways.

            Deidara picked up the scroll with one hand, turning it so he could see the address. Sure enough, his name was printed there in neat script. He put down his newly purchased _Icha Icha: Scandal_ , carefully dog-earing the page. Then he examined the scroll, picking at the string keeping it from unraveling. Deidara pausing to remove the clay from under his fingernails so he could undo the knot, and the letter fell open on his lap.

            It was addressed to him, lowering the probability of clerical error, but his incredulity increased as he read further. The letter came from Konohagakure, a place Deidara had never even visited—

            He blinked, then reread the first line. This letter was definitely a mistake.

            Except. It wasn’t impossible, was it? Deidara assumed he would have known about any siblings, but he’d never met his mother anyways. He stared back down at the letter, taking in the information. That name…his mother, well, she had been Uzumaki, hadn’t she? He wasn’t sure. The name sounded familiar, at the very least.

            Deidara hadn’t thought about his mother in a long time. She’d left before he had time to form any memories of her, leaving only him and his father—a man that was remembered, but only just enough for his death to hurt. He’d never speculated about where she was—why bother thinking about what you couldn’t control? —and never suspected she might have found a new family, a different path. His father rarely spoke of her, or maybe it was simply that Deidara didn’t recall if he had.

            He’d never imagined he might have any other family, and then—

_What if he’s like me?_

            The thought occurred to him suddenly, and Deidara blinked at the obviousness of it. He glanced down at the hand not holding the scroll, the lips on which were pressed into a thin line. He realized how tense he must have looked, and the mouth stuck its tongue out at him.

            He turned his attention back to the letter, wondering why he was only now being informed about long-lost little brothers. It was a question that was answered almost immediately, and Deidara nearly dropped the scroll. Whoever had written this thing wanted him— _him!_ —to take custody of a child.

            He snickered into his hand, which did nothing to quell the noise of his other mouths. Deidara had no intention of taking responsibility for a loud, whiny, hungry child, even if he _was_ family.

But.

            The kid was in an orphanage, wasn’t he? That was where the letter was coming from. Deidara remembered the he’d stayed at, all too well. There was a stark difference between a reasonably innocuous doujutsu and an aberrant _kekkei genkai_ that was barely practical. If this boy was anything like him and the orphanage in Konoha anything like the one in Iwa, the last ten years of Uzumaki Naruto’s life would have been positively nasty.

            Perhaps Deidara had more brotherly feelings left in him than he had known.

* * *

 

            Sasori stared. This expected from someone physically incapable of blinking. However, the duo’s experience allowed Deidara to notice the changes in Sasori’s mood, subtle as they were. If he had to make a guess, he’d say the redhead was thinking something along the lines of—

            “Brat, are you _stupid_?”

            And there it was. It was one of Sasori’s most common sentiments, second only to _art is eternal_ and _I will kill you_.

            “He’s my brother, yeah!” Deidara protested, as if that meant anything.

            If it was possible, Sasori’s expression became even more derogatory. “An eight-year-old _child_. What, exactly, are you planning to even _do_ with him?”

            Deidara shrugged, absently pulling a stick of half-used lip balm out of his robes. “Dunno. Feed him, yeah?”

            “You don’t even have your own house,” Sasori told his partner.

            The blonde began to apply the lip balm. “So? I live here”—he gestured to the compound around them— “that works just fine.”

            “And he’s going to live here too?”

            “Why not?” Deidara finished applying the balm on his face and moved to his left hand.

            “Don’t be a fool. Do you think Leader-sama would allow that? Even if he did, you leave every other week on a mission. You can’t even properly care for yourself.”

            Deidara chose to ignore the last part, and switched the lip balm to his right hand. “I’ll just leave him here”—

            “With Kakuzu and Hidan?”

            Deidara blinked.

            “Humph.” Sasori turned to leave, robe billowing behind him. Just as he reached the door, his partner spoke.

            “Master Sasori.”

            Sasori stopped, but didn’t turn.

            Deidara stuffed his lip balm back into his robe. “Your parents died when you were a kid, yeah?”

            Sasori inclined his head in the slightest sign of acknowledgement.

            “They send you to an orphanage?”

            “No.” Sasori provided no further details, as was his fashion.

            “The ones in ninja villages are the worst, yeah. Overcrowded, dirty, not enough food or space or friends.”

            “Is it my imagination, brat, or are you going soft?”

            Deidara made a face. “You know me better than that, yeah!” He paused pensively. “If he’s anything like me, yeah, they’ll turn him into a weapon. Better ours than theirs.”

* * *

 

            “Uzumaki Naruto,” Leader echoed, as if trying to taste the name in his mouth.

            “Yeah, yeah,” Deidara confirmed. The colorful projections they used made it hard to gauge mood, especially for the ever-enigmatic leader, but other people weren’t so stoic.

            “A fucking kid?” Hidan complained from across the circle, loud even in projection. “I didn’t ask for some snotty little shit fucking around.”

            “I try and make a point of disagreeing with Hidan,” Kakuzu added, “as his ideas are usually stupid. However, I will make an exception to that rule for this issue.”

            “Thanks?” Hidan replied. “No, wait. Fuck you.”

            “Very well,” Leader said, voice cutting over the bickering duo easily. “However, no contact with Konohagakure is permitted. You can have a house to yourself in the nearby village for this purpose. In addition”—here, he eyed Kakuzu and Hidan—“the child is not to be harmed. Deidara, you have one week to find the child.”

            He released his hand sign, ending the discussion. “Dismissed.”


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hello," the blonde man said. "I'm here to take you with me, yeah."

            The giant clay bird set down too far away from the walls of Konohagakure for anyone to get a good look at it. Deidara approached the gates of Konoha easily, fingers chafing in the gloves he had snatched from a corner clothing store.

            The blonde absolutely _despised_ gloves. He was only wearing them because Leader was now rather set on getting ahold of Uzumaki Naruto, and had insisted that stealth was the better way to go, necessitating the ditch of Akatsuki’s full regalia. Deidara was not used to sneaking into anywhere. He was, after all, an S-class nin, and was used to getting what he wanted by blowing things up and generally overpowering everyone in the vicinity.

            For a second, he wished that Sasori was here to help him. _Careful what you wish for_ , he chided.

            Looming in front of him, the gates put an end to his reverie. It was manned by two not particularly intimidating ninja with leaf headbands, and Deidara gave them a quick once-over. One wore a bandage over the bridge of his nose and his cheeks, and the other observed him with the white, pupil-less eyes of a doujutsu. They both looked bored.

            “Name?” the one with the bandage asked in a dull tone.

            “Deidara, yeah,” Deidara said.

            “Civilian or nin?” he asked.

            “Civilian,” Deidara replied.

            “You flew in on a giant bird,” the one other one said. Her unnatural eyes blinked at him. Apparently her doujutsu gave her long-range vision or something.

            “Damn,” Deidara said, without much feeling. “Sure, whatever. I’m a ninja, yeah.”

            “Where’s your headband?”

            “Didn’t think I’d need it,” Deidara replied. He toyed with the idea of blowing the gate (and the ninja) sky-high and making his way inside, but as nice as it was to think about, it wouldn’t accomplish his objective.

            The ninja eyed him cautiously. “What’s your village of origin?” the one with the bandage asked.

            “Iwa,” Deidara replied. It wasn’t technically a lie; he was just neglecting to mention that he had since left.

            “Business?” asked the one with the doujutsu.

            “I’m a ninja, yeah,” Deidara replied.

            “No, what are you going into the village for?”

            “Oh. I’m picking up my brother from the orphanage,” he told the ninja.

            “I thought you were from Iwa?” Doujutsu asked.

            “Mum got around, yeah,” Deidara replied.

            Band-Aid looked at him skeptically.

            Deidara tried to movie past them, but Doujutsu held out a hand. “Wait. Why did you lie about being a civilian?”

            “Figured it’d be easier,” Deidara told her.

            The ninja blinked, but after a few seconds Band-Aid sighed and waved him through. “Just be quick,” he grumbled, making a face—luckily for Deidara, it didn’t appear that leaf-nin were on high alert today.

* * *

 

            Naruto fidgeted in his seat. His hair was combed unnaturally straight, clashing with his vivid orange outfit. The chair was too big for his size, and he swung his legs enthusiastically until the matron snapped at him to stop. He sulked for almost five seconds (a record high) before absently rubbing his stomach. His customary food-thievery had been put to a stop by the ever-vigilant matron, leaving him hungry almost all the time.

            “Can I go now?” he whined, throwing back his head to look up at the not particularly stimulating ceiling tiles.

            “No,” the matron said firmly, eyeing him. “Fix your posture, you want to make a good impression.”

            Naruto reluctantly stopped swinging his feet and focused his attention on the door across from him. It didn’t move. He squinted, trying to wish it into doing something, but the unfortunate state of events didn’t change.

            It was five more minutes before the door burst open, waking Naruto from an almost-dozing state. The newcomer was someone he had never seen before, which was unusual in a reasonably small village like Konoha. He expected to at least remember seeing him somewhere, but the blonde hair and soft features were completely new.

            “Who’re you?” he asked, tilting his head to get a good look at the man.

            “I’m Deidara, yeah,” the blonde man replied. “Who’re you?”

            Before Naruto had a chance to reply, the matron cut in. “I am Kaga Tomi. I assume you got my letter?” she said in a businesslike tone. The man gave a short nod, but he seemed more interested in Naruto, and the boy smiled up at him.

            “This is Uzumaki Naruto,” the matron said. “He’s the one I wrote you about.”

            This time—what was his name? Deidara—didn’t even bother to acknowledge her. Naruto caught the flash of irritation across her features and his smile widened. “Hi!” he said, jumping off the too-big chair. The man was taller than him, but not too much so. He regarded the smaller boy with the eye of his that wasn’t hidden by bangs.

            “Hello,” he said. He didn’t smile, his expression seeming more curious than anything. “I’m here to take you with me, yeah.”

            Naruto blinked. “To where?”

            Deidara shrugged. “To my home.”

            There was a pause. “Why?” Naruto asked.

            “You’re my brother, yeah,” the taller man replied, looking slightly stiff and awkward.

            “My…brother?” Naruto looked up at him, trying to see the resemblance. He supposed they were both blonde—but that was where the resemblance ended. The person standing before him had bright blue eyes and his hair was much smoother than Naruto’s untamable spikes.

            “That is correct,” the matron cut in, sensing an opening. “Naruto, you will go to live with your brother, as he is now of age to take care of you.”

            Naruto squinted up at the other blonde. “Where do you live?”

            “Here and there,” Deidara said.

            The boy considered. “Near the Academy?”

            Deidara tilted his head. “Which one, yeah?”

            “The Ninja Academy!” Naruto exclaimed, as if that should be obvious.

            “No,” came the reply.

            “I’m going to be Hokage, ya know! I have to train to be a ninja at the academy!” he protested. Now it was Deidara’s turn to squint in confusion.

            “That’s ambitious, yeah,” he said, as the matron rolled her eyes at the proclamation.

            Naruto grinned. Anything that wasn’t dismissal was encouragement in his book. “Yeah! That’s why I have to go to the academy!”

            “You don’t have to train at an academy to be a ninja,” Deidara told him.

            Naruto frowned. “Yeah you do!”

            “How do you know, yeah? I know lots of ninja who didn’t go to the academy!”

            His eyes widened. “You know ninja?”

            “I _am_ a ninja,” said Deidara.

            Naruto regarded him skeptically. “You don’t have a headband. Are you a lame ninja? You look like a lame ninja.”

            Deidara sputtered. “I’m an _awesome_ ninja, yeah!” he exclaimed, pointing threateningly at Naruto. “I’ll show you, you little…” The blonde was halfway through pulling off one of his black gloves when the matron gave him a vicious look.

            “Please control yourself,” she said sharply (a rebuke Naruto had heard dozens of times). Deidara seemed to check himself, and pulled his glove back on.

            “If you’re a good ninja you should be able to teach me to be a ninja too!” Naruto told him.

            The taller blonde sighed. “Just come on.”

            Naruto crossed his arms. “Only if you promise to teach me how to be a ninja!”

            “Fine, yeah, just come on,” came the irritated reply.

            Naruto blinked as if he hadn’t expected this, then broke into an absolutely blinding smile. “Really? YES!” He jumped a little into the air in his excitement.

            The matron offered Deidara a brush and several papers. “Sign these please. Then you can leave.” Obediently, he picked up the brush with his fingertips and, without glancing at the papers’ content, signed them all.

            “Come on,” he said to Naruto, who followed on his heels looking like he’d just won the lottery. The duo made their way out of the building into a small street, Deidara moving so purposefully Naruto almost tripped when he stopped short to look at the ground.

            “What?” Naruto asked.

            “Look at this,” Deidara replied. Naruto followed his gaze to the dirt-packed road.

            “I don’t”—

Feathery lips brushed his ear for the briefest moment, and he caught the whisper of “We’re being watched, yeah. Do as I say.”

            “Watched?” Naruto declared loudly, still trying to look at the road. “Well, yeah. They’re always around, ya know.” He’d always felt the shadowy eyes on the back of his neck when he left the orphanage, though he’d be hard pressed to name the first time he’d realized they were following him. It was sort of nice to have people around all of the time, even if they never acknowledge his presence. Sometimes, when he was alone with them in the dark, he said things to them that he didn’t have anyone else to say to. Naruto didn’t think they’d tell anyone. They didn’t seem like that sort of people. “They don’t do anything,” he added as an afterthought.

            Deidara looked chagrined. “Don’t yell it out! Why do you think I _whispered_ it to you?” Before Naruto could reply, Deidara spun 360 degrees to face behind the boy, reaching his right hand into his pocket. When the shorter blonde turned to see what it was that he was looking at, his eyes fell on an androgynous figure in a stylized mask. (It looked like an elephant, but Naruto couldn’t be sure.) He opened his mouth to ask who it was, but realized one second too soon.

            “ANBU,” he whispered reverently. The tales of Konoha’s mysterious, elite operating force who vanquished their enemies in animal masks were well known.

            When the figure spoke, it was steady and nearly toneless. “Step away from the boy, or we will be forced to attack.”

            Naruto was confused until he realized they were speaking of Deidara. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see a singular, bright blue eye looking down at him. Deidara’s other hand was on his other eye, under his hair. “I signed all your stupid papers,” he protested, glaring at Elephant.

            The elephant-masked person regarded the blondes, and Naruto wondered if he was going to tell his (her?) comrades in the shadows to attack—killing Deidara without a doubt. Instead, Elephant repeated, “Step away from the boy, or we will be forced to attack.”

            Naruto began to step away, but the hand on his shoulder migrated to the back of his collar. Suddenly he found himself jerked through the air. Seconds later, his feet made contact with hard ground, and he wobbled but kept his balance. He briefly registered Deidara’s yell of, “Come and get him!”

            _I’m on the roof_ , he realized. Then he was jerked again, deposited painfully onto a slightly squishy surface. “Hold on tight, yeah!” exclaimed a gleeful voice, and he dug his fingers into the pliable whatever-it-was he lay on not a moment too soon. He was jerked forward with alarming velocity by his surprisingly sturdy handholds, and his nose was squished even more.

            There was a yell.

            Sounds of an explosion sounded much too close for comfort, but Naruto couldn’t reach up to cover his ears because the shockwave rocked his platform. He let out an involuntary shriek as one of his hands slipped free of its grip. Wind stung his eyes, his body swinging wildly from side to side, and he caught a glimpse of Konoha spread out far below.

            Naruto wondered how far he could fall and still heal and gulped, then lost sight of it as the white platform he was riding on rocked again, jolting him bodily into it. He felt fingers close around the wrist not holding on for dear life, yanking him up and his other hand out of its grip. Deidara stood on top of the platform, (which Naruto could now see was a giant, white bird) balancing expertly on its back. He brought Naruto’s hand to his waist, and the younger boy held on with all his might.

            Deidara yelled something that was lost in the wind as the giant bird rocked to the side, Naruto clinging to him even more desperately. He wondered how the other blonde knew what he was doing in the highspeed wind that his own eyes were squeezed shut to avoid. From his position so close, he knew Deidara was saying something due to the vibrations in his chest, but any spoken words were lost in the shriek of the wind. Naruto did, however, hear the large explosion behind them. Seconds later, the bird began do dive.

            Naruto began a shriek of surprise, but the crook of an arm pushing his head stifled his yell in Deidara’s shirt. He dug in his heels to keep his feet from lifting off the bird due to the velocity, clenching his fists and probably picking up some shirt in them.

            Then the descent stopped, and Naruto nearly went head-over-heels onto the forest floor. The only reason he didn’t was one hand holding onto his waist. “Get down,” Deidara muttered at the disoriented boy before leaping gracefully to the forest floor. Naruto followed, with decidedly less dexterity. “Be quiet, yeah,” Deidara added, turning to him.

            Naruto simply stared. Deidara’s bangs, which had previously covered his right eye, had been disturbed and swept back by the wind. Deidara’s left eye was a vivid blue, but his other eye was replaced with a mechanical device reminiscent of a camera. “What?” he demanded.

            “You’ve got a camera for an eye!” Naruto exclaimed, forgetting, in his surprise, the whispered warning.

            “Not so loud,” snapped Deidara. He reached up a hand to adjust the camera-thing, but seemed to think better of it. “And it’s not a camera.” With a few quick hand signs on his part, the giant bird shrunk to palm-size. He squished it in his palm, then put it back into his robes. “We have to get moving, yeah. How fast can you move?”

            “Dunno,” Naruto said. “I’ve never tried, ya know. Not across lots of land.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just in time for thanksgiving!  
> (thanks to Jinx, my beta reader and don't forget to review!)


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A kunai whistled past his ear, jerking him back into reality. He couldn’t see how it moved, but Deidara evidently could, because he stepped aside almost lazily as Naruto turned to the attacker.

           Naruto had a lot of questions. It wasn’t like him to stay quiet when he had questions, so he asked them in order of priority.

            “Why did the ANBU let us go?” he asked.

            The other snickered. “They didn’t.”

            Naruto blinked. “What do you mean?”

            Deidara shrugged. “I threw them off our trail, yeah.”

            “But how? I mean”—he paused, searching—“they’re _ANBU black ops_ , ya know. You don’t just…throw them off the trail.”

            The taller blonde glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “If you think ANBU black ops are unbeatable, you have a lot to learn.” He paused, then glanced at Naruto a little resentfully. “If you weren’t with me, I might be able to take them on, yeah.”

            “Yeah right!” Naruto scoffed.

            “You’ll see, yeah,” Deidara huffed. “Nothing can defeat my art.”

           There was another, longer pause, broken only by the sound of rustling leaves and feet on branches.

           “…Are you really my brother?” Naruto asked.

           “I think so, yeah,” Deidara replied. “Your mum’s Uzumaki Kushina, right?”

           “I…don’t know,” Naruto admitted. “They died when I was born. I never met my mom.”

           “I didn’t meet her either,” Deidara told him. “She left when I was a kid.” He grumbled something unflattering under his breath.

           “Oh,” came the reply, and then: “Is your father still alive?”

           “No. You’re my only relative, yeah.”

            “And you’re _my_ only relative!” Naruto told him, characteristic cheerfulness returning. “I thought I had none, but now I have one!”

            “Shh,” Deidara cautioned. “No more talking. We need to move.”

            Move they did. Naruto began to feel the soreness set in after a few hours, but gritted his teeth and ignored it, powered by the fact that he was going to be taught how to be a ninja. He didn’t want to chicken out so early in the journey, anyways. That would definitely be lame.

            About three hours in, Deidara gestured for Naruto to stop. Naruto didn’t know what the gesture was supposed to mean, only shooting a questioning glance as he continued. His brother ended up having to pull him back by the collar of his shirt.

            “That means stop, yeah!” Deidara said.

            “How was I supposed to know that?” Naruto protested.

            The taller blonde ignored him, gesturing towards the area ahead of them. The trees thinned out, opening upon a small town in the valley.;

            “Is this the River Country?” Naruto asked.

            “Of course not!” Deidara replied. “It would take almost a day to get there on foot. Right now I need to get more clay.”

            “Why do you need clay?” the smaller blonde challenged.

            “I need clay for my art, yeah!” the other proclaimed.

            “Alright,” came the reply.

            The duo began to walk towards the treeline, Naruto tagging behind his brother. As they reached the crest of the hill, Deidara paused, brushing his bangs back over his mechanical eye. “Do you have any gloves?"

            Naruto shook his head. “Why do you need gloves?” Deidara glanced sideways at him, then opened his hand.

            Naruto gaped. The palm in front of him wasn’t holding anything, there was just something set in the middle of it. A pink tongue stuck out at him from between a pair of lips, and Deidara withdrew his hand. “It’s my _kekkei genkai_ ,” he said by way of explanation, turning away.

            “Freaky,” Naruto murmured, eyes wide.

            Deidara spun around, and Naruto took a step back. The icy blue eye now held darker depths, something undeniably cruel. All Naruto’s survival reflexes screamed _dangerous!_ at the top of their mental lungs.

“I—I’m—I’m s-sorry,” he managed to stutter, not quite sure what he’d done wrong. _Stuttering! What kind of shinobi_ am _I? But…_

            After a tense half-second, Deidara turned on his heel and, stuffing his ungloved hand into his pocket, started down towards the village. Naruto began to wonder if he shouldn’t have stayed in the orphanage, but followed all the same.

             The village didn’t have any walls, which puzzled Naruto. He opened his mouth to ask Deidara how they protected themselves from enemies, but stopped himself at the last second.

The walls weren’t the only unfamiliar thing about the village. Naruto had never left Konoha before. Deidara weaved expertly through the people on the street, and Naruto didn’t have time for sightseeing as he tried to keep up with his partner and simultaneously trying to stop people from bumping into him (these villagers seemed a lot more touchy-feely than the ones from Konoha). After several seconds of ducking and dodging, Naruto managed to grab a handful of Deidara’s shirt to guide him. Deidara glanced down at him, but the taller blonde didn’t seem angry anymore. Naruto grinned back up at him.

            Deidara stopped right in front of a shabby little shop. The drab outcropping over the door declared **POTTERY** in cracked paint. Even so, Deidara seemed pleased. “Lucky we found a place, yeah,” he commented to the boy still clinging onto his shirt.

            A cascade of jingles marked their entrance to the shop. The place was small, but well-lit. A wrinkled woman looked up from the counter when the duo entered, and a young boy rearranged vases in the corner. Naruto crinkled his nose at the pungent, earthy smell, but Deidara paused as the door swung shut to take a deep breath. He let out a contented sigh before striding towards the desk.

            The woman smiled as he approached. She spoke in a soft, lilting voice. “I am Dokite Yuma. How may I help you?”

            “I need some clay,” Deidara told her. Naruto rested his elbows on the counter, taking in as much as he could. The lady seemed very nice. _I wonder if everyone here is like that?_ he wondered.

            Dokite Yuma seemed taken aback. “We don’t sell that here,” she informed the blonde. “However, we do have some quality tea sets on sale for a”—

            “I just need the clay, yeah,” Deidara said, interrupting her mid-pitch.

            “We don’t sell pure clay here,” the shopkeeper insisted.

            Naruto looked up at his brother. His eyebrows crinkled into a frown, and Deidara reached into the pocket not taken up by his ungloved hand. When it reappeared, a crumpled (and slightly singed) handful of _ryo_ was deposited on the counter. Naruto’s eyes widened—it was a lot of money to a small, orphaned boy. “How much?” Deidara asked.

            “The clay is not for sale,” stated Dokite. “If you do not wish to purchase anything else, you may leave.”

            The boy who had been arranging vases looked over with his thumb in his mouth, sensing the hardened voices.

            If Deidara had been frowning before, he was scowling now. His hand reached once more into his pocket, dumping another handful of paper onto the counter. Naruto’s eyes widened, and even the shopkeeper eyed it with interest.

            “How. Much,” enunciated Deidara. The shopkeeper hesitated, and he pulled forth a third handful of bills.

            Dokite evidently decided that it wasn’t worth arguing and that the _ryo_ on the counter outweighed her reluctance to sell. She sighed. “Very well. Wait here,” she told the duo before disappearing through a door behind the counter.

            Deidara eyed the _ryo_ on the counter. “Kakuzu’s gonna kill me, yeah,” he muttered, more to himself than anything.

            “Who’s Kakuzu?” Naruto asked, looking up at him. Deidara seemed mildly surprised, like he’d forgotten the smaller blonde was there.

            “A stingy bastard, that’s what,” he said.

            “Oh,” Naruto replied, bemused. That hadn’t really answered his question, but the shopkeeper returned too soon for him to ask further. She placed such a little amount of clay on the counter that Naruto thought Deidara might be irritated, but he just shrugged and commenced shoveling it into his pockets with both hands (Dokite commenced shoveling _ryo_ into _her_ pockets).

            Deidara turned away, rubbing the residual clay on his hands off on his pants. Naruto trailed after him, still clutching his shirt. He seemed in less of a hurry to get through the village now, giving Naruto time to look around.

            The village was much the same as Konoha in many ways, the most obvious difference being the lack of people wearing _hitai-ate_. There were other, more subtler differences, as well. People here were more friendly, more welcoming.

            Naruto tugged on Deidara’s shirt to get his attention. The taller blonde looked down. “What?”

            “Um”—Naruto paused, unsure of how to address Deidara, then decided to forego address altogether—“can we get some food?” He gestured towards a noodle place across the street from them.

            Deidara glanced down at him, then to where he was pointing. He looked regretful. “Sorry, Naruto. We’re already behind schedule.” He glanced around cautiously. “Once we ditch our tails, we can fly to our hideout and get food, yeah.”

            Naruto hung on his sleeve. “Pleeeaaaase?”

            Deidara sighed. “Sorry,” he said, and kept on walking. Naruto rubbed his stomach sadly. He stared down at his feet, which were scuffing up dust as he lagged after Deidara.

            Suddenly, something smashed him in his face with so much force it sent him crashing to the dirt, knocking the wind out of him. His head slammed into the dirt, setting off firecrackers of pain in the back of his skull, so much that he could almost hear them.

            Or—were those real explosions? It was hard to tell.

            Naruto’s eyes blinked open to a blurry, bluish scene. Ignoring the pain in his skull, he sat up, and something warm ran down his chin. A metallic taste he recognized as blood filled his mouth. He tried to ignore the ache in his face, and, summoning his resolve, managed to get a leg and an arm on the ground. He heaved himself up, and another wave of pain washed over his head. It wasn’t as bad as the original, but he lost his balance and collapsed against the nearest available support.

            The nearest available support was not expecting this, and Naruto felt the person he was holding onto stumble and then jerk to the side. He tried once again to regain his balance, but as soon as his feet leveled under him and the stars in his vision receded to he could see the ground, his vision blurred again. This time it was not from pain but from speed: he was flying through the air again.

            There was the _clang!_ of metal on metal too close to his ear, and he flinched. Then his feet hit a new surface, sending shockwaves up his legs and yet another wave of pain coursing through his skull. He swayed, casting around for something to hang on to, and righted at the last minute. When he looked up, Deidara was frantically molding clay with his fingertips a few footsteps away. Naruto registered a small, tangential thought of _what the heck?_ as he stepped towards his brother. He barely had time to register when Deidara hurled the clay in his hand over Naruto’s shoulder, and he spun around—

            A white spot exploded in his vision, and he heard the bang microseconds later. Momentum threw him backwards, and he frantically tried to find his balance as he crashed into something relatively solid. Strong arms folded around him, and he was flying through the air once again.

            Naruto heard the loud and emphatic “ _Shit!_ ” from Deidara right in his ear seconds before the ground came up to meet the duo. Cushioned by the larger man, his landing was less jarring this time around. Deidara released him quickly, only to grab his hand and yank him behind a structure reminiscent of Konoha’s Ninja Academy.

            The smaller blonde stared mutely at Deidara, who was still swearing as he pulled out more clay with both hands.

            He found his tongue. “Shouldn’t you be doing— _not art?_ ” he hissed, almost hysterical. Deidara looked up and fixed him with a paralyzing gaze, intense and dangerous but not _angry_ like the last one had been. A slow smile spread across his face.

            “ _My_ art,” he whispered, almost reverently, as his hands opened to reveal twin clay birds, which took flight almost immediately to the skies, “is an _explosion!_ ” Deidara screamed the last word, almost inaudible as it coincided with two massive fireballs appearing behind him.

            Naruto stared, dumbstruck.

            A _kunai_ whistled past his ear, jerking him back into reality. He couldn’t see how it moved, but Deidara evidently could, because he stepped aside almost lazily as Naruto turned to the attacker.

            “You’re going to have to do better than that, yeah,” he told the man from ANBU who stood behind them. This one wore a cat mask, decorated with red stripes.

            “That won’t be an issue,” replied a male voice from behind the mask, just as Deidara jumped into the air and came down on an ANBU in the same mask, feet connecting squarely with his shoulders.

            Cat-ANBU no. 2 exploded into smoke. Naruto felt a hand on his collar and was pulled to the side—still blind from the dust. It took seconds to clear, but when he looked around, he stared around at five people with blonde hair and orange outfits. They all looked oddly familiar—

            “Two can play at that game,” Deidara said from off to his left, and Naruto realized that the weird blondes gathered around were . . . him!

            “What the heck?” he said, loudly. Then he was shoved aside as the original cat-ANBU rushed at Deidara. The two men exchanged lightning-fast blows much too fast for Naruto to follow, and he spared a thought to marvel at the skill involved.

            Quick as it had begun, their blows stopped, cat-ANBU spearing one of Naruto’s doubles—who promptly dissolved into clay as Deidara jumped nimbly backwards, a clay bird forming beneath his feet.

            Naruto felt claws digging around his chest as the bird grabbed him. His stomach dropped into his toes as it ascended, and he got a full view of the village spread out below, in blues and greens and browns.

            Suddenly, the dull landscape was punctured by a blindingly vivid spot of color: pink, green and yellow swirled together and another ANBU took to the skies, circling upwards as Deidara’s bird came to a complete stop in the blue expanse. Naruto stared in horror as a polychromatic missile hurled towards him, missing the bird but going over it—

            _Deidara!_

            But suddenly Deidara was right beside him, holding onto the claw of the bird right next to him, and all Naruto could think to yell was “What are you _doing_?”

            Then Deidara opened his palm, letting a small clay bird fly out and over into the sky. He looked as if he’d eaten something rather sour.

            “Calling in the cavalry, yeah,” he told Naruto, and then suddenly the smaller boy felt arms around his waist and then the claws let go and he screamed at the top of his lungs as he fell through the sky.

            They connected with a surprisingly pliable surface Naruto had come to recognize as clay, but it still knocked the breath he had been using to scream out of his lungs. Deidara was on his feet instantly, and suddenly the bird rolled and ducked, sending Naruto’s already upset stomach sloshing around his body—he was suddenly glad he hadn’t gotten anything to eat after all. The clay seemed to have adhered to him, and he didn’t roll around.

            Explosions he now recognized as Deidara’s creations sounded, much too close and loud for comfort. Picking out noises from the cacophony was difficult, but there was a high-pitched, halting note that sounded like laughter.

            Then the bird jerked unnaturally, and the laughter stopped—or rather, turned into less audible cursing, and they were falling again but this time it was longer and so much more terrifying and Naruto couldn’t see anything—

            The ground connected with a shockwave that coursed through his body, culminating in an explosion of agony near the top of his left arm, even as the air was pushed out of his lungs and blood ran into his mouth. Something grabbed onto his shirt, which tore but held, and dragged him up—jostling his arm in the process and he yelled with what little air he could find even as his back was rubbed raw.

            Through the pinpricks of light showered across his vision Naruto could see Deidara’s signature blonde hair—now stained with dirt and _was that blood?_ The man rotated cautiously, and Naruto made out three more ANBU surrounding him with _shuriken_ at the ready. Someone was speaking, and he realized it was coming from up above him, from the person who was holding onto him.

            “…cornered,” came the deep voice, “and we have the target in our possession.”

            It took Naruto a second to realize they were referring to _him_ , and then he kicked out with all his might at the ANBU holding him—who promptly twisted his arm, causing Naruto to nearly black out from another wave of agony. The man kept speaking, oblivious to his yell.

            “We will kill you if you do not surrender immediately”—

            “Like _you_ could,” Deidara sneered. “I’m not going to waste my Ultimate Art on you, yeah!”

            The ANBU surrounding Deidara charged before he finished his sentence, and Naruto wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t look away—

            But he didn’t have to, because Deidara blocked the first one and slid under the legs of the second one, so fast he blurred—or maybe that was Naruto’s head? Before he had time to register, there was a slew of tinny explosions and one of the ANBU near Deidara fell down with a yell.

            Suddenly he was flying through the air in the arms of the man holding him and he screamed at the pressure on his arm and tried to kick but it didn’t work and only made his arm hurt more—everything went black.

            He opened his eyes and his arm hurt but it hurt less, and he was drenched in something sticky and warm that as probably blood but _nosebleeds don’t cause this much blood_. The sky was blue but there was something yellow in it—not bright, but vivid and he realized it was his brother’s long blonde hair, and then he realized that he was in clay and a foot landed hard near his ear. There was an explosion and his head hurt _so damn much_ and the blur in his vision faded as what he saw became more pronounced: Deidara in with yellow hair and black fishnet and cat-ANBU with white spikes and a flak jacket—

            Flak jacket was too close to Deidara, who was falling back and Naruto wanted to help Deidara because he was _nice_ and he was _the only family left_ and _oh god Deidara might die!_ but he couldn’t so he tried to yell but it was a moan—

            And the metal from a _kunai_ flashed in his vision, wrestled between the two combatants, and Naruto couldn’t stand to _just watch_ so he wrenched his left hand out of the clay, grabbed the ankle of the ANBU when it stepped next to him and _yanked_ as hard as he could, but his other arm exploded again in pain and he moaned, spots dancing across his vision.

            The worst part was cat-ANBU wasn’t gone—he’d moved a little and now Deidara wasn’t in danger but they were still fighting and it was too fast to follow and he was _so helpless_ and _someone_ was going to die—maybe even Naruto was going to die and he _didn’t want to_ —

 A projectile _whooshed_ through the air and both ducked without missing a beat, but it filled up Naruto’s vision and when it was gone there was something else there—not something, multiple somethings, and the sun glinted off their weapons.

            Fingers closed around Naruto’s wrist and someone yanked so hard and he screamed and then spots took over his vision once again but he managed to hold on to consciousness and then there was a yell and the bird he lay on moved up, as if a weight had been lifted off it.

            Something bright appeared in his blue field of vision, a vivid red halo surrounding a very odd sort of face—somehow fundamentally _wrong_ but he couldn’t tell _how_ —so he kicked out at it but strong arms held him down as another wave of pain wracked his body…

            Then Deidara’s blue eyes and scuffed face pushed over the bright red hair, and he grinned down at Naruto.

            “Meet the cavalry, yeah!”

            Naruto passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo! So sorry about the late chapters. Nice thing is, I have lots more on the way that should be up soon!  
> I know I don't reply to reviews, but believe me, I see you guys, I appreciate you guys, I love you guys. You're pretty fucking awesome. Keep on reviewing!


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto opened his mouth to ask a question (Have you killed anyone?) and then closed it again.
> 
> He didn’t want to know.

            When Naruto opened his eyes, he stared up at a dark blue expanse. He rocked to a gentle rhythm, and the air was clear enough that he made out the steady beat of wings. Strangely enough, most of the pain was gone, and he heard murmuring voices at the edge of his perception.

            He tried to move, but found himself stuck fast to the clay under him, and tried to wriggle out of it—surprisingly, he could move his arm again.

            “He’s awake,” muttered Deidara’s voice, and then, louder, “Hey, Naruto.”

            “Already?” replied another, unfamiliar voice—placid as an undisturbed pond, containing just a trace of mild surprise. The weird, messed-up face that Naruto recognized from right before he passed out, complete with the signature red hair, appeared over his head. It spoke again: “His rate of regeneration is impressive. I didn’t expect him to wake up until we landed.”

            The redhead prodded Naruto’s previously damaged arm, and the blonde squirmed, trying to get away from the unnaturally stiff fingertips. “A _kekkei genkai_ , perhaps? I would be very interested to learn…”

            “Leader-sama said not to kill him, yeah!” Deidara appeared over Naruto, and, seeing his state, released the clay holding him down with a few quick signs.

            _Kill me?_ Naruto wondered, alarmed.

            The redhead withdrew his hand. “Of course. His body would be hard to make use of anyways—regeneration doesn’t transfer well.”

            Deidara smiled easily, offering Naruto a hand up. He gestured towards the man next to him. “Naruto, this is Master Sasori, my partner. Master Sasori, meet Uzumaki Naruto, my, um, little brother.”

            Sasori looked to be about fifteen, but it was hard to tell—he had a sort of ageless, uncanny quality about him. He wore a high-collared black robe with red clouds on it, obscuring most of his body. The most noticeable thing about him, however, was his telltale _hitai-ate_ : not a symbol Naruto recognized (reminiscent of an hourglass), but with a deep slash through it all the same.

            The blonde pointed a finger accusingly and tried to back away (something hard to do on a clay bird in the air). “You’re a missing-nin!”

            “Yes,” Sasori replied blandly.

            Naruto stared, not quite sure what to say to the admission.

            “He’s not gonna kill you, yeah,” Deidara reassured.

            The smaller blonde looked lost. “But…I mean, why are you…ya know?”

            “What?” his brother inquired.

            Naruto gestured helplessly. “Ya know! _Friends_ with him?”

            Sasori made a derisive noise. “We are _partners_.” Naruto glanced over at him apprehensively.

            Deidara snorted. “Well, _I’m_ a missing-nin too.”

            Naruto stared again, this time at him. “What do you mean?” He sounded a bit betrayed.

            “I didn’t like Iwagakure,” Deidara said. “So I left. They didn’t like that, yeah,” he added as an afterthought.

            “But…you’re so…” Naruto paused. “You’re nice, ya know!”

            Sasori made a noise that might have been amusement if you recorded it and then slowed it down to 1/16th speed.

            Naruto opened his mouth to ask a question ( _Have you killed anyone?_ ) and then closed it again.

            He didn’t want to know.

Instead, Naruto stuck out a hand to their companion. “Pleased to meet you, ya know!”

            Sasori eyed the blonde with unblinking eyes. “We are acquainted, I believe.”

            Deidara rolled his eyes. “It’s polite, Master Sasori. Shake hands, introduce yourself, yeah!”

            Sasori simply blinked at Deidara and turned away. Deidara shrugged.

            Naruto examined his arm. He reached up to gingerly touch his nose, but even as he pressed harder it seemed completely healed. Deidara noticed his movements. “Master Sasori knows some medical ninjutsu, thankfully. He healed you, apparently with your help.”

            The small blonde peered around, taking in the dark sky and land spread out below them. “What happened?” he asked.

            “Master Sasori came and picked us up, yeah!” Deidara said, sounding very enthusiastic. The comparatively somber redhead turned his gaze to Deidara. The irritation was clear even in his bland voice.

            “I _saved_ you, brat, and I wouldn’t have had to if you were capable of performing the simplest task without”—

            “How was _I_ supposed to know Konoha’s black ops were tailing him?” Deidara protested, turning his eyes away from Naruto.

            “Black ops don’t tail _seven-year-old children_ ,” Sasori explained derisively. “You must have caught their attention somehow.”

            “Which was why I didn’t expect them, yeah!” The blonde sniffed. “You tell him, Naruto.”

            Naruto’s eyes flicked between the bickering pair. “Tell him what?”

            Deidara turned to him, surprised. “The people who follow you.”

            The smaller blonde crinkled his nose. “Oh, right! I guess that was them. They always seemed so nice though…”

            “You talked to them before, yeah?” Deidara asked.

            “Well…no,” Naruto admitted. “But once one saved me from some angry chunin, ya know.”

            Sasori looked pensive. “Odd.” His head spun just a bit _too_ far to fix his eyes on Naruto. “Who was your mother, boy?”

            “The same as mine,” Deidara cut in before Naruto could say anything. “Uzumaki Kushina, I think. Naruto, who’s your father?”

            “He was a great ninja, ya know!” Naruto declared emphatically.

            “What was his name, yeah?”

            The boy’s face fell. “Dunno. But I know he was a great ninja!” he added, smiling again.

            “Interesting,” Sasori mused.

            “Maybe it has something to do with the _kekkei genkai_?” Deidara wondered aloud.

            “It may not even be a _kekkei genkai_. It is unusual, but not particularly powerful,” Sasori said. “No great clans are formed around it, so there would be no reason to protect the boy.”

            Naruto tilted his head. “What’s a _kekkei genkai_?”

            “Hereditary ninja abilities—or mutations, yeah,” Deidara added.

            “Cool!” Naruto brightened. “So I have a special ability?”

            “You have an increased rate of regeneration,” Sasori stated, “but it may not be an actual _kekkei genkai_.”

            The small blonde crinkled his eyebrows. “Huh?”

            Deidara looked over the side of the bird. “We’re here! Hold on tight!” Naruto barely had time to grab onto the bird’s surface before the trio was hurled downwards with Deidara’s ecstatic yell.

            The bird set down in front of a dull, gray building nestled among the leaves of a forest. Naruto was still catching his breath from the sudden, but exciting, drop, and wondering exactly where _here_ was. Sasori seemed ruffled—both literally and metaphorically—but none the worse for wear. He stepped fluidly off of the bird, following behind Deidara. Naruto, with considerably more difficulty, dismounted after him. He moved after Sasori, and now that they were both standing, Naruto could see how short Sasori actually was—taller than Naruto, certainly, but short all the same, and the redhead’s height only highlighted how young he looked.

            “Where are we?” he asked Deidara.

            “Akatsuki’s base, yeah,” came the reply.

            “Akatsuki?” Naruto inquired.

            “The group I belong to,” explained Deidara. “Master Sasori works with them too.”

            Naruto supposed it made sense—a ninja without a cause was just a mercenary, after all.

            They made their way to the only entrance in the building—Naruto running, the other two walking—an equally squat, dull, and gray door. Strangely enough, it didn’t have a door handle, only a strange little hole where the handle should have been.

            Naruto jabbed a finger in the impression and wiggled it around futilely. After a few seconds of this, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to blue eyes. The hand moved in front of him as Deidara reached over, fitting a blue-green ring into the depression in the door. With one flick of the wrist, the ring turned and the door started to creak open.

            “You need the ring, yeah,” Deidara told his brother, pushing him forward. Naruto heard Sasori’s soft footsteps behind them as he stepped into a dimly lit kitchen with cracked tiles and dirty dishes in the sink. He crinkled his nose at the smell.

            The door creaked closed, and the duo (minus Sasori, who had disappeared through another door) entered the next room: a large dining area, with two chairs next to a table—at least, two chairs that probably _had_ been next to a table, as one was overturned and the other had its legs broken off. The wooden table was stained with something that looked and very much like blood, but Naruto wasn’t sure if it was, because its scent mingled with the blood he was drenched in (blood that was starting to dry in a very uncomfortable manner, sticking to his skin and his clothes and generally being a nuisance).

            It was Deidara’s turn to crinkle his nose. “Looks like the zombie twins were here,” he grumbled.

            “Zombie twins?” Naruto asked as Deidara lead him through the dining room and to another door.

            “Kakuzu and Hidan,” Deidara replied. “They’ve got no respect for true art. Don’t piss them off, yeah.” He tugged open the door to reveal a flight of stairs nestled in a dark closet. They were set up oddly: you walked onto a small landing and then turned and made your way up (Naruto’s right) or down (his left).

            Deidara entered and began to descend, Naruto on his heels. “Why are they the zombie twins?” Naruto wondered.

            “’Cuz they’re _zombies_ ,” Deidara told him, turning and opening another door. It opened on a stone hallway much rougher than the kitchen and dining room. The shallow yellow tinge from the ceiling lights cast a sickly sheen on Deidara’s pale skin. “What do you think? I carved it out myself,” he bragged, gesturing to the stone around them.

His little brother wasn’t sure what to say to that, and stayed silent, letting Deidara continue. “Leader-sama wants to meet you, yeah,”

            Naruto shivered in the drafty hall as he followed. “Leader-sama?” He felt as if all he’d done today was ask questions and be confused.

            “The Akatsuki’s leader,” Deidara clarified, turning down a corridor. “Calls himself ‘Pain’, but just refer to him as ‘Leader’.”

            To their left was an imposing metal door, which the elder blonde held open for his brother. Naruto entered cautiously, wondering someone who called himself ‘Pain’ would be like. Not stranger than Deidara, surely?

            The room was of much the same build as the corridor only much bigger, the inadequate lighting causing the corners to be draped in shadow. A table which seemed to be carved out of the rock itself took up most of the room, and in a chair at its head sat someone who could only be the Akatsuki’s leader.

            Spiky orange hair and a _hitai-ate_ with four vertical lines (plus one horizontal slash) framed a pale face peeking over the edge of a cloak just like the one Sasori wore. His eyes were closed, despite the fact that he had to have heard them coming. The most striking aspects of his appearance, however, were the plethora of metal bars that appeared to be sticking through his face, the light glinting off of the metal.

“Is that why your name’s Pain?” Naruto blurted out. If it wouldn’t have hurt his hands, Deidara would slap a palm to his forehead.

            Pain opened his eyes, and suddenly the piercings weren’t the most striking aspect of his appearance. The leader’s pupils were ringed by black, the circular formation continuing outwards the corner of his sclera. Purple eyes fixed on Naruto.

            “I am called Pain because I intend to show the world the depths of true suffering,” he said bluntly.

            “Oh,” Naruto replied, and then, “Why?”

            “To bring peace,” the leader told him.

            There was a pause as the blonde pondered how that was possible, and Pain spoke again, this time to Deidara. “This is Uzumaki Naruto?” He sounded…skeptical.

            “Yes,” Deidara confirmed.

            “Why is he covered in blood?”

            “Most of it isn’t his, yeah,” he explained.

            “Did you encounter trouble?” inquired Pain.

            “ANBU, actually,” Deidara told him. “Naruto claim’s they’ve tailed him since he was a kid.”

            Pain’s eyebrows shot up, pale light glinting off of the metal stuck through them. “Do you know why?”

            “He heals quick,” Deidara said, fiddling with his ponytail. “Master Sasori said it might be a _kekkei genkai_ , yeah.”

            The Akatsuki’s leader pressed the tips of his fingers together. Deidara pulled the tie from his ponytail and shook out his long hair, blonde but streaked with blood and soot and dirt. He examined part of it, trying to work out a tangle until he felt something lean against his leg. Glancing down, his eyes landed on Naruto, who was seated on the gritty floor and leaning his head against Deidara’s leg. His eyes were closed, and suddenly his brother remembered that the kid was a seven-year-old orphan who had probably never seen much more blood than a skinned knee or pricked finger until today.

            All in all, Deidara supposed the kid was handling it pretty well. He supposed violence ran in the family.

            “He will be trained, of course,” Pain said, and it was _almost_ a question but not.

            Deidara glanced up, his musings interrupted. “I…” He started, then paused. “I hadn’t thought that far, yeah.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I guess?”

            The leader seemed to take that as a ‘yes’, and continued. “There’s a school for children in the village. He _will_ need an education.”

            Deidara had been through too long of a day for the leader’s passive-aggressive “suggestions.” “Why do you care, yeah?” he grumbled. “He’s _my_ brother.”

            Pain rested his palms on the table. “The boy has . . . much potential. I would hate to see it wasted.”

            _Yeah, right._ Like the leader was doing this out of the kindness of his (probably pierced) heart. Deidara felt a sudden urge to protect his little brother from Pain’s machinations. He gave a noncommittal grunt, and was dismissed with the wave of a hand. The blonde ground his teeth at the gesture, but decided that it wasn’t worth fighting over.

            “Wha…” Naruto grunted (he had been asleep, after all) as Deidara shook him away.

            “You can go back to sleep soon,” his brother assured him. Deidara half-led half-dragged Naruto up the two floors to his room, but passed the door and instead pushed open the door right after it.

            “You can stay in Orochimaru’s old room, yeah,” he grunted. The room was slightly dusty, and several old scrolls lay on the bookshelves. Deidara mentally thanked—well, he didn’t believe in a God, so he supposed he thanked the capricious entropy of fate—that Orochimaru hadn’t decorated his room in the style of Kisame or Hidan. Instead, he favored a minimalist approach that Deidara’s sense of aesthetic could appreciate, with white walls and a pale purple stripe.

            Naruto made a dive for the bed, and Deidara held him back. “Wait. You should get cleaned up first.”

            The bathroom was just down the hall, and Naruto’s fatigue was catching. Deidara caught himself yawning before he tugged open the door.

            He stopped yawning to exclaim.

            There was a trail of dried blood on the bathroom mat, starting at the entrance and continuing to the bath. Blood was smeared on the shower wall, dripping down the ceramic. The mirror was dotted with red handprints, which pooled in the sink.

            It was rude, disgusting, and Deidara knew _exactly_ who was responsible. No one else would get so damn much blood everywhere and then not clean it up. “ _Hidan_ ,” he snarled, then dissolved into a slew of curses as he dragged his little brother up yet _another_ floor to the top of the complex. This bathroom was much nicer, with a bright blue curtain and a pleasant lavender smell.

            The blonde considered requesting to switch rooms with Kisame. Or, better idea, request Hidan be confined to the basement on principle—he bet he could get at least Kakuzu to agree with him.

            Naruto was shoved into the shower and instructed to clean up. The orange outfit he wore (which Deidara’s sense of aesthetic appreciated) was stained with blood, which Deidara knew from personal experience was very hard to wash out of clothes. Thus, the older blonde was forced to borrow a pair of Sasori’s pants (a quest which entailed walking down two flights of stairs to Sasori’s workshop, finding the absolute smallest pair possible, and convincing the redhead to lend it to him) for Naruto. Naruto blearily walked down the stairs to Orochimaru’s old room, forcing Deidara to stop him from tripping down the long, dark staircase multiple times. The kid crawled into the bed without even bothering to turn out the light.

            “Good night,” Deidara muttered as he turned it out, suddenly self-conscious.

            He realized for the first time how much effort on his part a little brother might actually take.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, thanks to Jinx and to everyone who reviewed!


	5. V

Naruto became conscious of laying on an unusually soft bed. It was definitely not his bed, because his bed was infinitely less comfortable and he was always cold because there were never enough blankets in the orphanage.  
He blinked open his eyes, and found himself staring at a textured white ceiling.  
Where am I?  
Then, all at once, he remembered. Deidara, the ANBU, the missing-nin . . . and, most of all, the fighting. There had been a lot of fighting, and the thought triggered a fading memory of a dream he’d had. (It involved Sasori’s hair turning into a small, red animal with sharp claws. Naruto promptly forgot it.)  
The blonde shoved off the heavy comforter, which smelled vaguely of peppermint, and swung his feet to the floor. Thankfully it was shag carpeted, and he took a second to feel it between his toes. Naruto noticed he was wearing a pair of light purple pants which sagged around his hips something awful. He was suddenly struck with worry over how his beloved orange jumpsuit had was fairing (and his painful stomach). His spiky head poked out the door, and he padded out into the hall. The light was on, but he couldn’t see anybody. However, his ears picked up someone moving around downstairs.  
Deidara was in the dining room. The room was rather conspicuously missing a table, so he sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning over a bowl of what smelled like…ramen? Naruto had never actually had ramen, only catching a whiff when he walked past Konoha’s restaurants on his way to do some errand or other. He was quite interested in trying it, and made his way over the wood floor (it had stopped smelling of blood, and now smelled only of cleaner) to Deidara. As he did so, he realized that the blonde had not, in fact, been checked the temperature (as Naruto had originally assumed) but that the mouth on his left hand was slurping up the noodles.  
“Morning,” Deidara said, cheerfully. Naruto sat down next to him, the smell of food making him even more hungry than he already was. He noticed that Deidara was now wearing his hitai-ate, stacked squares slashed viciously through.  
“Where’s the table?” he wondered loudly.  
“Burned it, yeah,” Deidara replied, shoving his hand further into the bowl to lick up the very last of the broth. He stood up, taking the now empty bowl with him, and started towards the kitchen.  
“Why?” Naruto queried, following. Deidara was certainly odd, but even for him that seemed a little . . . extreme.  
“Who knows what kind of shit Hidan got up to on it?” Deidara grumbled, crossing the room. “Inconsiderate prick,” he added. Naruto stared over his shoulder as he opened the small fridge, revealing several racks of small packages labeled “Instant Ramen” and one fishy-smelling package labeled “Hoshigaki”. His stomach grumbled longingly as Deidara grabbed one of the former made to swing the door closed, and the blonde paused. “You want one, yeah?”  
Wordlessly, but with much feeling, Naruto nodded. Deidara gestured at the contents of the fridge, then walked few steps to the microwave. Naruto grabbed one of the “Instant Ramen” packages (he didn’t know what “Hoshigaki” was—it didn’t sound very good) and read the instructions. He followed them to the letter, Deidara showing him how to get the microwave to work, and three minutes later he was looking at a steaming cup of instant ramen.  
Hesitantly, Naruto dipped his chopsticks into the noodles and brought them to his lips. The fact that they hadn’t quite cooled didn’t do anything to quash the wonderful flavor, and Naruto finished the cup in less time than it took to prepare. Deidara looked on with raised eyebrows.  
“Do you want another?”  
Naruto’s eyes widened. “Can I?”  
Ten cups of instant ramen later, Deidara lead the way to his room. Naruto felt full for the first time in as long as he could recall, and he had discovered the new love of his life: instant cup ramen. (Deidara didn’t seem to be too fond of it, but that just meant more for Naruto!)  
“We have a house in the village, yeah,” Deidara explained. “You can’t stay here. I’m moving my stuff.”  
His room was a small, and it was pungent in the way Naruto remembered the clay shop in the previous town smelling, a scent he was beginning to associate with his brother. Deidara produced several scrolls from his robe, then sat down on the floor in the same cross-legged fashion as before. He opened one of the scrolls and spread it out, then pressed his index finger to the middle.  
The room exploded into smoke, and when it cleared, Deidara’s bed was gone. Naruto’s eyes widened.  
“Whoah…”  
“Give me a hand,” the older blonde instructed without turning around, tossing a scroll over his shoulder—a feat, seeing as he couldn’t see the target. Naruto caught it, pulling it open to see an indecipherable mess of lines and symbols. He squinted at it.  
“What’s this?”  
“Mm?” Deidara placed two slim fingers on the scroll, and smoke once again filled the room. “Storage scroll, courtesy of Master Sasori. Just add a little chakra, yeah.”  
Naruto peeked over the top of his scroll. “What’s that?”  
“What’s what?” Deidara asked absently.  
“Chakra.”  
The blonde finally turned to regard Naruto with a blue eye. “Oh, damn. Didn’t you go to the Academy, yeah?” Naruto bristled.  
“I was gonna, ya know! Next year!” he protested.  
“I thought you were seven years old?”  
“Seven and a half,” Naruto corrected proudly. Deidara raised his eyebrows.  
“Guess they start you late. Here.” He shooed Naruto out the door. “Wait a sec while I get this.”  
Naruto tried to resist, but was shoved outside as smoke once again filled the room. He frowned at Deidara making him go away—wasn’t his brother the one who came and got him? It didn’t make sense.  
The hall was not particularly stimulating, and he managed to stand almost ten seconds before finding somewhere else to be. There was a door across from him, but as he stepped across the hall he found that the tangy, metallic smell of blood oozed out from under it, complemented by the dark stain on the doorknob. Feeling suddenly sick, he moved down to the room where he had been sleeping. It wasn’t an interesting room, as he’d been there before, so he moved on.  
The only door left was the one across from his room. Naruto took a good sniff before he opened it to make sure it wasn’t like the other room. He inhaled the sharp scent of cleaning chemicals, but thankfully nothing else, and turned the handle.  
When he flicked on the light, the room looked exactly as you would expect a room that smelled of cleaning chemicals to look: tidy, sparkling clean, and sparsely decorated. Uncarpeted floor was cold on the bottoms of his feet. To his left was a small bed with a brown blanket. Really, the only nonessential piece of furniture in the whole bland place was a desk in the corner, which Naruto padded over to.  
A writing brush and inkwell were placed next to a neatly arranged stack of papers. The paper on top was covered in rows and rows precisely written numbers interspersed with addition and subtraction signs, with the occasional appearance of symbols Naruto didn’t recognize. When he moved slipped the top sheet of paper off, the second was as indecipherable as the first, and just as uninteresting.  
He moved over to the door he’d spotted earlier. It opened to a smaller, but more interesting, room. Several shelves lined the walls, stuffed with scrolls and books. Naruto moved closer to read the meticulously labeled shelf, written in the same neat handwriting as the paper in the preceding room. The closest label read History, and as he scanned his eyes down he saw the titles listed on the scrolls—The Eyes Have It: A Brief History of the Uchiha, Lesser Kage of Lesser Villages, The Most Influential Clans of the Last Fifty Years.  
It was all very dull, and he moved on. The next label, one shelf over, was much more interesting. Jutsu, it read, and it was sorted neatly into categories of Water, Wind, Lightning, Earth, Fire, Miscellaneous, and Varied. With scarcely a pause, Naruto grabbed for the nearest scroll—one in the Earth section. Jutsu were important for ninja, right?  
The tips of his fingers brushed the paper, and—  
“Stop it, yeah!”  
A hand closed around his wrist, spinning him around painfully to see Deidara. “Why are you in here?” he demanded.  
Naruto blinked. Deidara seemed angry—this wasn’t new, as the matron used to be angry at him all the time, but Deidara didn’t seem like an angry sort of person.  
“It was open, ya know,” he said defensively.  
“Doesn’t matter!” Deidara told him incredulously, then tugged on Naruto’s wrist as he headed out of the room. “Did you touch anything?”  
“Just the papers,” Naruto told him. Deidara replaced them swiftly, then flicked off the light. The door made a thunk sound as the duo entered the hall.  
“Look, Naruto,” Deidara stopped in the hallway, and Naruto nearly tripped over a storage scroll as he came to a halt. “Do not go poking around this place without me. You’re a little kid”—  
“I’m not little,” Naruto protested.  
“Yes,” Deidara told him, “you are. You are very, very little compared to every person in this hideout, and if you do stupid things like mess around with things you shouldn’t be messing with, then you might just get on someone’s bad side. And then”—he snapped his fingers—“goodbye.”  
“Goodbye?” Naruto echoed in a small voice, put off by the intensity in his brother’s tone.  
“You’re dead, yeah,” Deidara clarified, then added when Naruto said nothing, “Don’t talk to any Akatsuki members besides Sasori and me. Don’t piss them off, whatever you do.”  
Naruto said nothing, and Deidara strode down the hall to the stairs.  
They tramped through the kitchen, arms stuffed with storage scrolls. Naruto had changed back into his orange outfit—slightly stained and torn, but clean enough.  
“Here’s your pants, yeah,” Deidara said loudly, throwing the purple pair Naruto had woken up in at the half-open door on one side of the room. It hit the door, pushing it closed further.  
“Wait,” came a voice as they were halfway out the door. Sasori was standing in the kitchen, holding the pair of pants. “The seal.”  
“Right,” Deidara muttered, and Sasori approached Naruto.  
“Give me your arm,” he commanded in a dull voice. The small blonde looked to his brother for confirmation, and Deidara nodded.  
“Just drop the scrolls on the floor, yeah.”  
Sasori moved right next to Naruto, taking the boy’s wrist in his hand. His slender fingers were cold, and even though he was standing right next to Naruto, the blonde couldn’t feel his body heat. It was altogether eerie.  
The redhead summarily produced a well of ink, maneuvering Naruto closer to the kitchen table. He pulled a brush out of his robes, dipped it into the ink, and Naruto winced as he began to draw symbols up and down the forearm in his hand.   
“What are you doing?” He demanded. Sasori didn’t answer, merely tightening his grip on Naruto’s arm. The black ink was cold on his skin. Sasori moved the brush with the air of one much practiced, and within seconds he reached the end. Within seconds of that, the ink started to burn.  
Naruto squeaked, as much in surprise as in pain.  
“You’ll live,” Sasori told him, picking up the ink and starting back towards the door he had come from. It seemed as if it didn’t matter much either way to him.  
“What was that?” Naruto asked Deidara, gingerly picking up scrolls from where he had dropped them.  
“Seal, yeah,” Deidara said. “Leader’s nuts about security. Master Sasori made it so you can’t talk about the Akatsuki to anyone not in it.”  
“Why not?”  
“Don’t wanna relocate again,” he explained. “Best to stay incognito.”  
Naruto scrunched up his nose, following his brother into the trees. “Incognito?”  
“Secret, yeah,” Deidara told him.  
“Why?”  
“Because Akatsuki is a mercenary organization. Missing-nin have many enemies.”  
Naruto had heard of mercenary missing-nin. They were the scum of the earth, killing anyone for anyone who paid them enough: without honor or loyalty. Deidara seemed better than that—  
Except. He remembered how Deidara had fought the ANBU black ops. Amazing, yes. But did he really think all the blood smeared on him yesterday was his? There was a chance it came from a wounded ANBU—a slashed throat, perhaps.  
Naruto remembered Deidara’s intense gaze, his warnings to stay away from his coworkers, for his own safety.  
“Are you the bad guys?” he asked, suddenly.  
Deidara paused, cracking a branch underfoot. “No such thing as bad guys,” he said, turning to look at his brother with a piercing eye. “In life, there is only…art.”  
Naruto tilted his head. Deidara turned, and kept walking towards the village.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh i hope the formatting isn't super fucked up


	6. Interlude I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Report,” he said in a tired voice, and a trace of apprehension at what the reply would be wormed its way into his mind.

            The Hokage looked up from the papers piled on his desk. He went to rub his eyes, but noticed at the last minute that his hand was still stained with ink, and settled for squeezing them shut. They opened to an ANBU black ops captain standing at attention in front of the door, wearing the mask of a cat. White Cat was also the man’s ANBU code name, but Hiruzen knew the real name of many operatives, this one in particular: Hatake Kakashi.

            “Report,” he said in a tired voice, and a trace of apprehension at what the reply would be wormed its way into his mind.

            “We lost them,” Kakashi replied bluntly, stiff as ever. Hiruzen took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly.

            “What happened?”

            “I caught wind of what was going on and intercepted the jinchuriki in the village. He was with a blonde civilian, so I did not attack right away. Unfortunately, the civilian was actually a shinobi, and took to the air with the jinchuriki”—

            “His name is Uzumaki Naruto,” Hiruzen interrupted, and Kakashi inclined his head in the tiniest of movements before continuing.

            —“with the jinch-with Uzumaki Naruto. He was trailed to the edge of the village, where he managed to duck into the forest and interfere with our sensor. We attacked once again when he reached another village, but he was aided by ninja who arrived on the scene.”

There were two major injuries, but no fatalities.”

            Hiruzen pursed his lips. “One man did that?” It wasn’t a particularly professional question, but the idea that only one person could evade his ANBU— _Hatake Kakashi_ , especially—was worrying.

            “Yes,” Kakashi said simply.

            “Do you know who he is?”

            “The orphanage matron claims he is the brother of Uzumaki Naruto, and that his name is Seishiro Deidara. He was born in Iwagakure.”

            It was possible, Hiruzen guessed. Uzumaki Kushina had spent some time in the hidden villages before coming to Konoha. The boy couldn’t be Minato’s, of course, but he’d never inquired as to Kushina’s personal past.

            “Was he acting under orders?”

            Hiruzen couldn’t see Kakashi’s face, but he felt a sinking feeling all the same.

            “Not from Iwa,” the ANBU replied. “At least one of the puppeteers who arrived at the end was wearing a black cloak with red clouds.”

            The implication hung in the air, unvoiced.

_Akatsuki_.

            Hiruzen sighed. Suddenly, he felt very exhausted. “How did this happen?”

            “The matron contacted Seishiro for the custody of Uzumaki Naruto. She claims she had no idea of his affiliations.”

            Probably true, Hiruzen mused. Either way, Inoichi would find the truth.

            The Hokage had warned that the civilians’ attitude towards jinchuriki would become a problem, and sure enough, it had. The usual satisfaction of _I told you so!_ did not materialize.

            “In addition,” Kakashi continued, “A subtle genjutsu was probably used to aid entry to the village.”

            “I thought we had better security than that,” Hiruzen said.

            “The Akatsuki are well known for their level of skill,” replied Kakashi. “Two chunin do not pose much of an obstacle.”

            Hiruzen felt a migraine coming on. He wanted to ask _how could one man defeat a whole squad of ANBU black ops_ but a face materialized in his head: black hair, pale features, cold golden eyes. Orochimaru had been taught well— _too_ well.

            If he was being completely honest, he doubted that Konohagakure had the resources to go to war with the Akatsuki, a foe with certainly substantial but as yet unknown power.

            Yet he had to do _something_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late. More is coming soon, however!  
> Thanks to y'all who review! You help motivate me and honestly there's nothing better than getting a notification that someone reviewed!


	7. VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Meditate?” Naruto asked, sprawled against a tree. Fifty feet away, the gray walls of the Akatsuki base were visible through the net of branches.
> 
> “Sit still and try to think about nothing,” Deidara defined, looking down at his brother.

            The house was small, with two bedrooms, but Naruto was blown away. He had only ever slept in dormitories with other orphans—and now he had _his own room!_ It was amazing.

            Setting up all the furniture Deidara had grabbed from the base went quickly, even if Sasori didn’t offer to help. Deidara stuffed his _hitai-ate_ into his cloak before putting _that_ away. The air was chilly, but their proximity to the Land of Fire kept he temperature well within comfort.

            Before long, Naruto began to get hungry. He started to ask to get something to eat, but then stopped himself. The matron at the orphanage had always hated it when he was hungry between meals, and yelled at him for being greedy and taking all the food from everyone else. Deidara hadn’t done it last time, but he hadn’t seemed very happy, either—Naruto didn’t want to be yelled at today.

            As time wore on, however, nonverbal communication took over when his stomach started growling. The instant ramen he’d eaten for breakfast seemed to grow tastier in his memory.

            “You wanna get something to eat, yeah?” Deidara asked, frowning at a table he’d been repositioning for the past ten minutes.

            “Yes!” Naruto was over at his side in an instant. “Can I have some more instant ramen?”

            “I’m sick of that shit,” Deidara grumbled, turning to leave. “Let’s go get some actual food.” Naruto’s face fell, but his brother didn’t notice as he strode out of the house, not bothering to lock the door.

            The village was small compared to Konoha, and the people were . . . odd. They stared openly—but not maliciously, more curiously, which Naruto found equal parts uncomfortable and thrilling. Their gazes seemed benign and interested, and they felt different on his skin than the looking he was accustomed to. Deidara glanced around for a few seconds before heading off towards a small restaurant, the blond boy following in his footsteps.

            _Best Pork In Town!!!_ Bragged the sign above the door, hanging at an angle. Naruto’s feet scuffed a dirty floor as the few patrons in the restaurant looked over at the entrance. A smiling man greeted them, clutching several menus.

            “Name?” he asked Deidara.

            Deidara gave him “Ota Seinosuke” and “Ota Shinzo” for Naruto, and they were escorted to their table.

            Naruto stared blankly across the small table at his brother. He couldn’t kick his legs, and he shifted impatiently. Deidara surreptitiously slipped off a glove and played with a piece of clay.

            He blurted out, “so when are you gonna tea”—

            “ _Shhhh_!” Deidara hissed, and Naruto felt the gaze of everyone in the restaurant on him. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

            “So when are you gonna teach me to be a ninja?”

            Deidara looked at him. “I mean . . . what do you want to know, yeah?”

            “Everything!” Naruto’s eyes shone. “I’m going to be the best ninja _ever_ , ya know!”

            “Not helpful,” Deidara grumbled. “So, uh, do you even know about chakra?”

            “It’s a ninja thing, right?”

            “Yeah, but—see, chakra lets you do jutsu”—

            “Ninja powers!” Naruto interrupted, a little loudly. Deidara made a _shush_ ing motion with his gloved hand.

            “Sure, whatever. Anyways, see, you’ve got your physical energy”—he made a motion as he was cupping something with his left hand—“and your mental energy”—he made the identical motion with his right hand—“and then when you combine them”—the hands came together, fingers intertwining—“and you get chakra. Which lets you do jutsu.”

            He looked over at Naruto, who had his eyes squeezed tight. A few seconds passed, and then, “What are you doing?”

            The boy opened one eye. “Trying to make chakra!”

            “That’s, uh, not really how it works. Yeah.”

            Naruto looked frustrated. “Then how _does_ it work?”

            “I’m . . . not sure,” Deidara admitted. “It just sort of happens, yeah?”

            “It’s not happening for me!”

            Deidara tried to remember how he’d first learned to create chakra, but nothing came to him—he’d started his training early, when he was just a child.  He settled for a simple, “Can’t help.”

            “You said you’d teach me but you’re not!” Naruto whined.

Deidara sighed. The kid was starting to get on his nerves. “I’ll ask Master Sasori, it’ll happen eventually, dammit.”

            Naruto’s face fell, slightly betrayed. Deidara realized his voice was raised above a whisper, several curious gazes turned his way. He rubbed the back of his head awkwardly.

            “I’m, um, sorry,” he said, down again to a whisper. The sincere apology tasted odd on his lips. “Master Sasori usually knows what to do, yeah.”

            Naruto blinked up at his brother. People had spoken harshly to him in the past—but, well, none of them really bothered to apologize. Particularly not the matron.

            “Oh,” he said softly. Then the food came, and he ate what he had ordered and more.

\--

            “Master Sasori, I need your help,” Deidara declared, leaning against the door to the man’s workshop. Sasori looked up from his latest project: reinforcing the armor of Hiruko with fuinjutsu, Deidara had to jump into the room as the door he was leaning on slammed closed with a flick of Sasori’s hand.

            “What do you need?”

            “How do you start out teaching someone to manage chakra?” Deidara asked, leaning against the now closed door.

            Sasori put down the brush he was using. “And why would you need to know that?” he replied, though he already knew the answer.

            “I mean, I gotta teach Naruto _something_ , yeah,” the blond told him.

            “On first name terms, are we?” Sasori mused.

            “Well, we _are_ siblings, you know.”

            “So he claims,” the redhead pointed out. “He could be a spy sent here to gain a deeper understanding of the Akatsuki’s inner workings.”

            Deidara rolled his eye, and Sasori thought he could sense the _click_ of the mechanical implant moving upwards. “You checked him yourself, Master!” he protested, and then, “he’s seven years old, yeah.”

            Sasori tilted his head, just a millimeter. “And who were _you_ at seven years old, Deidara? At seven years old, I was building puppets.”

            “He’s not like us,” Deidara said. “He’s just . . . an orphan. He’s innocent and trusting and shit, yeah.”

            “It could all be an act,” Sasori warned. “Best to wait a few years to become . . . attached.”

            “Whatever,” grumbled his partner. “So, you going to help me or no?”

            “First, you teach the basic hand signs,” the redhead told him, picking his brush back up and wiping the ink off.

            “Even more basic,” Deidara explained. “He has no training whatsoever. He didn’t even know what chakra was until I told him forty-five minutes ago!”

            “That would be infusing chakra.” Sasori’s head was once again bent over his work.

            “But how do you teach someone to do that?” Deidara insisted.

            “You don’t. Meditation helps, but in the end either you do it, or you don’t.”

            “I don’t remember why I even asked,” the blond grumbled out the door.

\--

            “Meditate?” Naruto asked, sprawled against a tree. Fifty feet away, the gray walls of the Akatsuki base were visible through the net of branches.

            “Sit still and try to think about nothing,” Deidara defined, looking down at his brother.

            “I have to do _that_?” Naruto whined incredulously, slumping against the tree even more. “How’s that gonna help me be a great ninja?”

            “You have to access chakra, yeah,” Deidara told him. “You infuse it into”—he cast around, then plucked a leaf with his hand—“this. You find the chakra and then push it into the leaf.”

            Naruto groaned. “The why do I have to meditate?”

            “Helps to find the chakra or something,” Deidara said. “According to Master Sasori.”

            His brother looked unconvinced.

            “Look, if you want to be a ninja, you have to learn how to do basic shit with chakra, yeah.”

            “Okay.” Naruto closed his eyes, and reached out for the leaf. Deidara handed it to him.

            Several seconds passed, and then the boy’s eyes popped open. “Did it work?”

            Deidara wasn’t an experienced sensory ninja like Kisame, but even his rudimentary abilities showed that there was just as much chakra in the leaf as there had been fifteen seconds ago—that is to say, none.

            “No,” he said. “You have to work longer than that.”

            Naruto looked disappointed, but he tried all the same. From time to time he’d look up and ask Deidara if it had worked yet, and every time Deidara would shake his head. He shifted uncomfortably on the ground, but the Iwa-nin noticed that his desire to be a ninja trumped his natural hyperactivity.

            Deidara pulled out the dog-eared copy of _Icha Icha: Scandal_ and opened it to the latest page. Despite the occasional interruptions, he was engrossed in the story—or lack thereof. Really, there wasn’t much of a plot. That was sort of the point.

            He was just starting to make some real progress through the book when he heard people coming. The blond may have had the trained physical senses of a ninja, but to be quite frank, he didn’t need them. A half-deaf civilian could have heard the duo coming.

            Naruto winced as a shriek of pain resounded through their area of woods. He opened his eyes to see Deidara looking up from his book a few feet away. Snatches of dialogue could be heard off to the left.

            “Stop it! OWCH! You aren’t supposed to fucking PUSH”—

            “You _asked_ —just stand still one goddamm”—

            A pair of grappling figures crashed through the trees. They wore the same robes as Sasori and Deidara had, but they were drenched in blood. A man with a mask on the lower half of his face attached to a hood and a long cloak grappled with a long spear embedded . .  . in the other man’s chest. The cloak had torn in the torso area, and crimson spilled over pale skin, staining white hair.

            Naruto gaped openly.

            Suddenly, the taller of the pair—the one in the mask—gained the upper hand. He slammed his partner into one of the trees across the clearing. The pale man grunted, and then yelled (quite an impressive feat with a spear in your chest).

            “Fine, but do it right this time, asshole!”

            The masked man leaned in, grabbing the spear—still slick with blood—using the hand that wasn’t braced against his partner’s shoulder.  Due to the duo’s proximity, Naruto couldn’t make out the words of his reply.

            There was a pause before a shout of pain broke the silence between them. The masked man held the spear previously in the other’s chest. His partner wore an expression of pain, and a low groan reached Naruto’s ears.

            “I, um,” the boy started, and then louder, “Do you need any help?”

            Two pairs of eyes turned his way. The masked man took a step back, letting go of his partner, who crumpled to the ground swearing. The gaze glaring down at Naruto was angry and unnatural—green irises without pupils, framed by red.

            “Is this your brat, Deidara?” the man demanded, irritation clear. Deidara looked up from his book, rolling his eyes at the pair. In a swift movement, he jumped gracefully down from the tree, but not before Naruto’s indignant tone broke the silence.

            “I’m Uzumaki Naruto, ya know!” he declared. He felt Deidara’s hand on his shoulder.

            “He’s my brother, yeah,” Deidara told the older blond told the man with green eyes, who seemed uninterested. He started towards the compound entrance, dropping the bloodied spear on the ground.

            “Come on,” he said, not looking around but gesturing towards his partner.

            Naruto looked up at Deidara, then gestured to the man drenched in blood who was in the process of standing up against his tree.

            “Is he okay?”

            The man heard them, and dark eyes turned to glare at the blonds. “Of-fucking-course not! What the hell does it look like? That bastard just yanked a goddamn _spear_ out of my gut!”

            Naruto was about to retort, but Deidara cut in. “Don’t swear in front of children, Hidan!”

            “Fuck you!” Hidan replied, now upright, taking a few threatening steps towards Deidara. “You’re the one who’s reading _porn_ in front of him.”

            “What’s porn?” Naruto inquired.

             Deidara didn’t reply, instead turning slightly red. “It’s not like I’m reading it _aloud_! Besides, I wouldn’t expect _you_ to appreciate any sort of art, yeah,” he huffed.

            “Oh, I _appreciate_ it, all right,” Hidan snickered. He seemed suddenly relaxed—an odd sight, with blood still oozing out of his gaping wound. Naruto began to feel a little sick as Hidan approached.

            Deidara was completely focused on the pale-haired man at the expense of his little brother. “True art,” he declared, “is in things that are ephemeral, fleeting. Temporary things. Like”—he opened his hand to reveal a finely sculpted clay bird—“explosions. Something you will never attain.”

            Hidan crinkled his brows. “What? I don’t care about your bullshit art, man.”

            The blond gazed steadily at him. “You’ll just . . . exist, never ending. Fighting, eating, sleeping. Unchanging, stagnant, _disgusting_.” He enunciated the final word with a sort of loathing Naruto             recognized, even if he didn’t know all the words his brother was using.

            Whatever it was, it struck a nerve in Hidan. He produced a metal rod from his hip, flicked his wrist. It expanded into a long, dangerous looking pike.

            Then there was a burst of motion and sound.

            “Do you think”—Hidan hissed, volume growing exponentially with every word, and there was a crash, and Naruto was knocked over—

            He looked up to see the long pike buried half its length in the tree Deidara had been leaning against. His brother was sprawled on the ground, and before he could register anything, Hidan grabbed the huge scythe strapped to his back. It buried itself in the earth with considerable vibrations, Deidara’s legs trapped between the three blades.

            --“I fucking _like_ it?” the bloodied man finished.

            Deidara jerked his legs up seconds in time to avoid bisection as Hidan viciously yanked the scythe across the dirt. He flipped easily to his feet and faced his attacker, whose pale skin was flushed red (or that part of it that was not already crimson from blood). The motion had further opened the wound in the other man’s chest, and something seemed to be . . . falling out.

            Naruto covered his mouth, trying to hold down the food he’d just eaten. Hidan took another step forward, snarling, “You have no idea how _goddamned lucky_ you are!”

            Deidara put two fingers up to his face, lips moving. “Katsu!”

            Hidan yelled, and Naruto closed further in on himself as the sound of an explosion reached his ears. Even as he squeezed his eyes shut, the blast flared through his eyelids, and he barely managed to not be bowled over sideways. Several seconds passed before he managed to wrench open his eyes, stinging from the dust.

            He tumbled over, vibrations shaking their way up his spine. The urge to vomit grew exponentially as the earth shifted under him. When he opened his eyes yet again, he stared up at a sky partially obscured by dust. Deidara was several feet from his last position, standing alert, and a blood pile, probably Hidan, rose to its feet. Hidan’s partner stepped into Naruto’s vision, the visible half of his face betraying anger.

            “Do you two want to move the hideout _again_?” he snarled, towering over the scene as Naruto struggled to get his arms under him.

            “What are you looking at me for?” Deidara snapped. “Your partner’s the one who attacked me.”

            Hidan got to his feet, glowering at the blonde. His face was splattered with . . . something, and one hand held the wound on his torso. “Fuck this,” he grumbled, moving towards the hideout and shoving his way past the newcomer.

            “You stupid assholes ruined the table _and_ the bathroom!” Deidara yelled after them, but Naruto didn’t hear. His eyes were fixed upon someone else: as Hidan moved past him, his back became visible. From the front, the pale haired man’s face looked mostly whole, but from his new perspective Naruto could see what he was missing.

            In the back, about a third of Hidan’s skull was blown out. Brain matter dripped down the back of his neck, disappearing into the black of his cloak. The jagged edges of his skull were starkly white against the blood around them.

             Naruto realized that perhaps some of the dust in the air wasn’t actually dust, and noticed  flecks of _something_ on his skin and jacket.

            This time, he really did throw up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ayyyy it's out! Special thanks to y'all who reviewed u make my day.

**Author's Note:**

> I love me some reviews :)  
> (bonus points for concrit!)


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